Keeping track of all your sales data can be a tough process, but with a tool like Smartsheet you can easily organize all of your data in a single spot and focus on closing deals. Add WebMerge to the mix and you can instantly populate all kinds of documents with data from Smartsheet. You’ll never have to copy & paste again!

In this example, we’re going to show you how to automatically populate a sales proposal with data from one of our sheets in Smartsheet when we update the status of the row to Send Proposal. We’ll then automatically email the proposal directly to our client for review.

To get started, we’re going to setup the template for our proposal using a Word document. Inside Word, we’re going to build our proposal, adding the repeating information that will be in every proposal (our logo, contact info, etc). Then for the spots that we want to insert our client info, we’re going to use merge fields like {$FirstName}, {$Address}, {$ProjectDescription}, etc.

Here’s what our proposal template looked like:

Once you have your template ready, we’re going to upload it to WebMerge. From the Documents page in WebMerge, click the New Document button and enter a name. On the next step, select Office Document as the document type then pick the file from your computer.

After you’ve uploaded your document, you’ll be taken to the Settings page where you can modify various settings like the type of file that is generated and the name of that file. For this example, we’re going to populate a PDF and then include the name of our client in the file name.

Next, we’re going to setup the delivery of our document so that it is automatically emailed directly to our client. On the Deliver tab, click the Edit button for your default email delivery. For the “To” address, we’re going to use a merge field. If you don’t have a merge field in your document for the email address, choose <<Other>> from the dropdown then enter something like {$Email}.

Feel free to edit any of the other email settings.

After you’ve saved your email delivery, we’re done with the setup process inside WebMerge and we’re ready to integrate with Smartsheet. To help with the integration, we’re going to use our friends over at Workato.

Inside Workato, we’re going to create a new recipe. For the trigger, we’re going to choose Smartsheet and then New or updated row in a sheet for the trigger.

Once you authenticate your Smartsheet account, Workato is going to load a list of the sheets in your account. Go ahead and select the sheet with your project/client data in it.

Next, we’re going to select the action of our recipe. For the app choose WebMerge, then Merge Document as the action.

Once you authenticate your WebMerge account, Workato is going to load a list of your documents. Go ahead and pick the proposal that you just created and they’ll load a list of the merge fields in your document. For each merge field, you need to pick the corresponding field from Smartsheet. This tells Workato how to send the data over to WebMerge so that it is populated in the correct spot on your template.

After you’ve matched up all of your merge fields, let’s go ahead and save our recipe and turn in on. We’re ready for a test! Login to Smartsheet and update on of the rows in your sheet. This will trigger your recipe in Workato and your proposal will be generated.

Here’s what our proposal looked like ready for our client:

Congrats, you’re all finished! You can now instantly populate all kinds of documents from Smartsheet. Can you think of any other ways you can use WebMerge to simplify your paperwork process?